During the storm, a woman and living being sat down on the sandy ground behind the horse; the whole length of her legs was covered by a long skirt, her bust on a pedestal of black or slate stone. With the first flash of lightning, her skirt opened up into a rose: the petals multiplied, as numerous as the grains of sand in the desert. Man must relinquish power and woman must relinquish man, thought the woman who was cooking on the sand and was a master in the art of thinking; a thought that passed through the head of the horse who impatiently awaited the storm’s manifestations.
The smell of the woman’s cooking began to spread out through the space to the fringes of the desert. Teas, vegetables, grains, charred meats.
As she cooked on the grill, the master in the art of thinking experienced the feeling of being a rose, of continually opening up into petals and perfumes, of being the lady where the monstrous hunger ends, and of the ability to quickly bear children, take them out from under her skirt, only a moment between making love and producing children.
It is a mirage, was the idea that came into the horse’s forehead. But when a thunderclap echoed, as if his hooves were pounding in the distance, the woman continued to disassemble into roses. Made only of petals, her skirt had an impressive color and a desert perfume. The horse, when the lightning bolt that burned the petals struck, called the lady the lady of the roses, the perfume the desert perfume, and the food that the woman prepared everything and nothing.
Giving them these names was a way to traverse the sky.
Wind rose up, which the woman found very aggressive; night was slow to come, the closed darkness she would like to walk in at the horse’s side; she had not anticipated what the desert night would be like, if there would be stars, whispers, perfumes, any brightness. Since the sand wasn’t fragrant, she imagined the perfumes of Pegasus’s body, especially those exuded by his hooves, which surpassed anything she might presume of flowers.
When night fell, the woman walked at the horse’s side, Müntzer and Saint John of the Cross were near but invisible. The woman was sweet but tough.
— Think — Pegasus said to the woman. — So that I always know where you are. — The woman lowered her eyes. According to the mirage, the horse was submerged in the water interrogating his hooves and, when he lifted his white muzzle, He remembered a text written on a yellowed paper according to the mirage. The woman understood that she could see the horse’s thoughts, other thoughts, and she lowered her eyes until they closed:
supper
is the end
of the day’s
work
and the beginning
of the night’s
rest.
Houseless,
Saint John of the Cross
and Thomas Müntzer
ate
in the middle of the desert.
They knew
there was going to be
a battle.
The horse
had already reached
their side.
Full of life, he ran around them. Always surrounding them, he placed his hooves firmly on the ground, lifted up into the air. Thus flying, Pegasus slept, his horse’s eyes closed.
Saint John of the Cross,
eating what Ana de Jesus had prepared,
looked at his dream in the nearby oasis,
the place of the book. He had nothing to write with, the words moved in front of his hand (they did not pass to the paper). He made an impatient movement on the sand, closed his fist. The shadow lowered over Thomas Müntzer’s body
the sleeping horse had become completely immobile in the air. John wrote upon the sand, kneeling, his body facing forward, four hooves and his hand writing
That night,
as was its habit,
the nearest oasis
slowly cooled off; the fire of the book hovered over sand’s surface, the hooves of battle horses, brothers to Pegasus, could be heard, if anyone wanted to apply an ear. Pegasus was still sleeping in the dream although he was actually keeping watch over John and Thomas Müntzer and that very secret.
But John of the Cross wrote without hands, without a pen, and without a book, his severed finger touching every flame; the trotting of the horses interrupted Thomas Müntzer’s dinner
the shadow of his head meditated
(in the place where she had prepared the food, the woman’s face was full of tears; she had seen Pegasus wake up and, suspended at the point where he had risen up to guard the writing of memory; he ate time, finished the dinner Thomas Müntzer had interrupted).
Ana de Jesus had opened her eyes in astonishment.
Pegasus, the horse, buried himself in the sand, waiting for someone who knew how to write to come and watch over him. While he had been suspended and moved through the air he had felt a blow on his neck, on his right side, beneath his mane; he certainly wasn’t going to die but he sensed that immobility, contact with the sand, and the book’s living flame could, before the following morning, cure him.
The writing
was the voices
in chorus
of thirty thousand peasants
who after abolishing the judges
made their way toward the massacre of Frankenhausen
and whose footprints were lost in the desert
A polar cold had invaded the battlefield; the peasants advanced slowly, their hands frozen on the tools they usually used to work the earth. A rider suddenly appeared among them, announced the defeat and the massacre telling them that, with such cold weather, those sitting in the middle of the horses’ blood would win
the text immersed in the horses’ blood tells of the adventure in the desert and how it liberated the mind from all spiritual imperfections and all earthly desires. It entered into that inner darkness where sensitive and invisible things can be penetrated through the snow, supported only by the ascent and ascending.
That is why I call it a stairway and secret because its steps and articles are secret, hidden to all sensitivity and understanding. That is why he says he went in disguise the bear was born from the snow, from a drop of blood that fell from the neck of Pegasus the horse. In the white and blue reflection he walked fearfully, but with apparent calm; it is a voice, nothing more than a voice, but he heard Müntzer preach; he wanted to look for the writing to know exactly what was in his preaching. He ended up writing on the page of the manuscript, the bear attentive and sitting at his side. Saint John of the Cross’s heart transcended the text, was buried in the fur of the bear
who said
this is the month I most love; it is the last month of the year. I wanted to write the Rules
there are four yellowed pages
at my side
on a tiny branch
the paper was lying on Saint John of the Cross’s open book
the Living Flame and I read, in the middle of the page, that union is predicated on likeness
those who resemble one another come together
like is known by like.
I continue,
looking around
what I just read
and the moment arrives when I say
the